Friday, 23 January 2015

Runaway Smile - Nicholas Rossis Blog Tour

Today I have the opportunity to welcome one of my good RRBC and FSFNet friends to my blog, Nicholas Rossis. He shares with us not only his smile but his take on his new release children's book, Runaway Smile as part of his Runaway Smile blog tour.

Finding the right moral

My children’s book, Runaway Smile, has been described as “a humorous book with a
serious moral”. People have made similar comments, but I always wonder which
moral they’re talking about. An author sits down and writes, and only later
does he analyze what he has written. Or at least that’s how this author does
it. So, I’d be happy to share my personal take on the story, but that assumes I
have got the same thing out of it as everyone else.

What prompted this is a strange call from a
psychologist family friend the other day. She said she loved the book, because
it said exactly what she had been struggling to convey through her own
unfinished book: that all men would turn into criminals if not for the mother’s
love.

When I indicated that this was not my personal
understanding of the story, she refuted me, explaining that I obviously did not
understand what I had written.

For me, it’s the story of how we wake up one morning
and realize that we’ve forgotten how to be happy. We seek happiness in our
work, in money, in power, in humour, in knowledge... All these can offer us
fun, symbolized by the false smiles worn by everyone (I’m not sure that people
have noticed this, but everyone except for the boy and the mother are wearing
strapped-on smiles). However, true happiness lies with sharing. With love. And
sometimes we forget that, and we need someone to reach out to us and help us
through this dark time of the soul.

As to what prompted it, I have been struggling with my
own version of a mid-life crisis, I guess, where I find myself giving up a
twenty year-long career to become an author. This is because my previous career
no longer made me smile. Sharing my stories, however, has put the smile right
back on my face!

So, why don’t you read Runaway Smile, online for
free and let me know what your take on the story is?

Book Blurb

I
woke up this morning and I had lost my smile and it wasn’t my fault and I
looked everywhere and it was gone. Then I met a workman and a king and the best
salesman in the world and a clown and no-one wanted to give me theirs. At
school, I asked Miss to give me hers, but she gave us a pop quiz instead, and
then no-one was smiling and…
From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus
epic fantasy series and children's books

A little boy wakes up in the morning and realizes he has lost his smile. After
spending the entire day trying to find it, he learns the truth behind smiles:
the only real smiles are the shared ones.

Avid reader. Web developer. Architect by training,
holder of a PhD in Digital Architecture from the University of Edinburgh. Most
importantly, author.

Nicholas loves to write. He has published Runaway Smile, a children’s book, and
the Amazon best-selling epic fantasy series, Pearseus. The fourth book in the series is currently edited, and
expected to be released mid-February.

He has also published The Power of Six, a collection of short sci-fi stories that include
his award-winning short story, I Come in Peace. This, too, has
reached #1 on Amazon.

Nicholas lives in Athens, Greece, at a forest’s
edge, with his wife, dog and two very silly cats, one of whom is always sitting
on his lap, so please excuse any typos in his blog posts: typing with one hand
can be hard. Mercifully, all of his books are professionally edited.

About Me

I was never going to be a writer...seriously. Somehow despite my great love of telling and writing stories, writing as a career was just not a consideration at all... I had other plans. However I was kind of propelled towards it... or perhaps my characters and world were begging me to be released from their prison (which is my mind) to be able to frolic on paper. So here it is, my first book of a trilogy, a teen fantasy adventure, Titanian Chronicles - Journey of Destiny.